How to get a monthly ticket as soon as possible? The answer is — I don’t know;) It took me over 1 month to get my Navigo card.

Why do I need a Navigo card?

Short introduction: if you live in Paris and use the public transport system, you should buy a Navigo card. You can upload it with weekly/monthly abonnement that makes the costs of travel pretty low: — a ticket on a bus costs 2€, — if you buy a package of 10 tickets in the automat, each costs 1,49€, — but when you have monthly abo for 75,2€ with an unlimited amount of trips it’s a pretty good investment. On top of everything the employers often reimburse half of the costs that you spend on travels to work. So I have my whole-Paris-ticket for only 36€.

How to get one?

Registration on the site (of course only in French) took not so long. You put your info (name, address) and upload your ID and your photo. In theory that’s all. You just choose, how you want to receive your Navigo card: via post or in the agency (basically any info-kiosk on any metro station).
I choose to receive my card via post (cause in the first month I was scared to talk with anyone in French;).

Straight after sending all my documents and demand for the card the site showed me small info, that they need to check my photo and if all is right, they start to prepare me my card. A few minutes after I received an email saying that in 10 days I receive my card. It was on the 12th of April.

What may happen? (the bad version)

On 22nd I still didn’t have anything.

I logged in and saw in my profile something like «photo is being checked». I thought it’s ok, it happens, that some checks need more time. + If the photo is not good, they will contact me, right?

After another week (as I was supposed to start working in 3 days, so would really use a Navigo asap) I checked on a site, how can I contact anyone to make things faster. And I found a rule, that you can only contact the transport company if you didn’t receive your card after 21 days (in theory, it’s after the delivery date: order date + 10 days to deliver + 21 days) that brought me to the 31 days after order… As I learned in Germany to follow written deadlines, I didn’t even think to ask anyone about my card before the prescribed date.

So, 1 month later, when all possible deadlines were over and when I still didn’t have my card, I decided to go to the closest metro-info-kiosk and ask about my order.

It took them 5 minutes to find me in a system, say, that it’s a problem with the uploaded photo, make a new photo with their webcam and issue me a new Navigo card.

What may happen? (the good version)

Btw. month or two later my husband also applied for the Navigo card. But he said straight away that he’ll pick it from the metro station personally. In 2 days he received the info that it’s ready, picked it up and started using it.

I have no idea, why it took so long in my case (cause even if the pic wasn’t right, what was the problem with contacting me and inform about it?). But I learned my lesson and started proactively ask about all the things I applied to, sent to someone etc. etc. So far no delays anymore.